Madden NFL 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

[jpdavis82]

VSN has posted an interview with Madden NFL 25 Lead Designer for Connected Franchise, Josh Looman.

VSN: Coach Contracts for when we just play as Coaches? Will Owners be different in the coach they want depending on their style? How will CPU Owners handle 32 Human Coaches when it comes to firing and hiring someone new?

Josh Looman: We have built new logic in to the coach hiring process. We’ve added scouts and trainers to the game. So if you are an owner, you can hire a head coach, scout or trainer. If you are a coach, your owner will wait until the end of the offseason and make a decision on your contract. Last year if your contract was up, basically that was it. This year the team will actually look at you and make you an offer.

Coach Firing will still be a feature that you can turn off and on but if you are an owner you can be forced to sell the team if you are running it into the red. We are also working on a feature that if you are forced to sell a team, you can’t just rejoin that league as the owner of that team. You will have to take over another team. We don’t want people running a team into the ground as the owner in an online league and then turning around and running them into the ground even more. Everything as a coach and player will be back again this year.

A lot of decisions that we make sadly are the result of people trying to exploit the game. It’s not all about adding cool new things since we have to spend a lot of time coding to block exploits.

One of our favorite new features this year is the ability to relocate a team in owner mode but the community guys really wanted us to have the ability to turn it on or off by league so we put that in as an option to be decided by the commissioners and league members.

[splff3000]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

http://www.virtualsportsnetwork.com/...2s-Josh-Looman

Thanks for the link JP. He did give a lot of "maybe next year" answers but there is a bit of new info in there too. One thing I didn't quite understand what he was talking about was how he's gonna do the draft classes so the guides wouldn't be useful anymore. It sounds to me like he's doing the same thing he did this year, just with more players. What am I missing?

[BradyFan12]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

Agh! It would have been nice to know if we could have CPU vs. CPU in offline franchise mode.

[DUDERMAN]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

Thanks for the link JP. He did give a lot of "maybe next year" answers but there is a bit of new info in there too. One thing I didn't quite understand what he was talking about was how he's gonna do the draft classes so the guides wouldn't be useful anymore. It sounds to me like he's doing the same thing he did this year, just with more players. What am I missing?

Exactly. I'm sure the guides will simply say, "scout their awareness, if it is a B or higher then they are the good version of the player, if it's C or lower then they are the bad version."

What they should do is have random names and schools and slightly varied height and weights for every player coming out. Then, instead of having 30 draft classes, have all the players from every draft go into a single draft pool to create a random draft class every year. Once a player is put into the draft, they are removed from the draft pool. Obviously, it would need to be tuned so you only get X amount of stars per draft. As for the story players, you can attach one story to 10 different players and once it is used for a player, it can't be used again in future drafts.

I dare you to try to make a guide from that.

[californ14]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

"VSN: Will you be able to edit your playbook in Connected Franchise?

Josh Looman: You can use custom playbooks in Connected Franchise. I didn’t work on that feature specifically but I believe you edit it outside of the mode, edit your custom playbook and then bring it back into the mode with you."


This is sounding promising....Though I fear it is only offline?

Still hoping for news on a true coach mode where one can just call the play in from the sideline and done; no more having to hike the ball.

[juggalotusx]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

VSN: Will XP goals be scaled to quarter length in Madden 25? It is hard to reach the goals if you are playing shorter length quarters.

Josh Looman: I have talked to people a lot about that one. I’ve spent a lot of time based on feedback from the community guys making sure that things like OLB and CB goals have more realistic goals. The issue that we have seen when we try to do this is that the CPU teams gain XP and progress too quickly. We are looking at ways that we can scale stats for next year but it will still be based on 15 minute quarters this year. I’m paying a lot of attention to things like how many tackles you can physically get as a LB in the game. It’s impossible to get 15 tackles per game controlling the LB.
If This is true how come I never saw it,EVER. I never saw the cpu do anything right with the xp and never saw anyone hit there goals at any position.
To me it sounds like he only cared about 1 thing this year and that is owners mode, when you have 9 months to do things but you dont want the programmers to have to much code to type in it just sounds like lazyness. Sounds like a real lack of caring on EAs behalf even though they say they work there buts off.

[jpdavis82]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

Thanks for the link JP. He did give a lot of "maybe next year" answers but there is a bit of new info in there too. One thing I didn't quite understand what he was talking about was how he's gonna do the draft classes so the guides wouldn't be useful anymore. It sounds to me like he's doing the same thing he did this year, just with more players. What am I missing?

He talked about this in the GC radio show last night. The draft classes potential to be a sleeper or bust will be randomized behind the servers and guys will have different odds of being a sleeper or bust each year. I believe he said a 40-50 percent chance of being a sleeper/bust.

[jpdavis82]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

[QUOTE=californ14;2045037227]"VSN: Will you be able to edit your playbook in Connected Franchise?

Josh Looman: You can use custom playbooks in Connected Franchise. I didn’t work on that feature specifically but I believe you edit it outside of the mode, edit your custom playbook and then bring it back into the mode with you."


This is sounding promising....Though I fear it is only offline?

Still hoping for news on a true coach mode where one can just call the play in from the sideline and done; no more having to hike the ball.

The features for connected franchise work for on or offline, no difference this year.

[Mckinley Cash]

VSN:*Can draft classes be edited? Are they randomly generated?

Josh Looman:*They won’t be randomly generated. All new players. You will be able to go in and edit their names, positions and numbers but you won’t be able to edit ratings.

I like the sound of that.
I bet you'll be able to share them as well, hence the "Madden Share" feature.

[oneamongthefence]

Changing schemes should be a lot better now that we can edit positions. So if I decide the packers are gonna be 4-3 team on defense I can move Clay to DE. Hopefully it won't be like it is in the past and most linebackers become 99 rated DE.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[Trick13]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

Changing schemes should be a lot better now that we can edit positions. So if I decide the packers are gonna be 4-3 team on defense I can move Clay to DE. Hopefully it won't be like it is in the past and most linebackers become 99 rated DE.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

I actually really want them to change that. I am very glad change position is in and I expected it to work as it always has, but moving forward they need to be better at translating position to position. Not just any 3-4 OLB can put his hand in the dirt and be a 4-3 DE. I suspect that Clay could be effective in that move and I am not really talking about high end players like Clay Mathews or Ware or Aldon Smith, but not every OLB should jump in OVR by moving them to DE.

I would not mind a sliding scale of AWR/PRC dropping for moving players - IE you move a player from OLB to DE - he loses 5-15 AWR points and PRC points because he now has to learn a new position - experienced players would lose less points and younger players would more likely be at the upper end of the 5-15 scale...

[splff3000]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

He talked about this in the GC radio show last night. The draft classes potential to be a sleeper or bust will be randomized behind the servers and guys will have different odds of being a sleeper or bust each year. I believe he said a 40-50 percent chance of being a sleeper/bust.

Huh?? Which guys have potential to be sleeper or busts? What about the rest of the players in the draft? Why am I so confused by this? Why can't they just say we have storyline players that have 2-4 different variations of stories and everybody else in the draft is random? Why is that so hard? Can somebody please break this down for me cause I seem to be lost in the sauce lol.

[bear_down520]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

Pissed that player rating edits aren't allowed again. Looman is terrible. He single handedly ruined Madden imo with CCM.

[jpdavis82]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

Huh?? Which guys have potential to be sleeper or busts? What about the rest of the players in the draft? Why am I so confused by this? Why can't they just say we have storyline players that have 2-4 different variations of stories and everybody else in the draft is random? Why is that so hard? Can somebody please break this down for me cause I seem to be lost in the sauce lol.

Go listen to the game changers radio show from last night, Josh Looman comes on at the 22 min mark

[splff3000]

Re: Madden 25 Connected Franchise Q&A with Josh Looman

Go listen to the game changers radio show from last night, Josh Looman comes on at the 22 min mark

Thank you JP, but if he says exactly what you just said, I still will have no idea what he's talking about lol. I'll check it out anyway to see if what he says clears everything up. Anybody know where archived shows for game Changers radio are or more specifically this particular show with looman?